PFR Ventures has invested in 7 new funds with a total capitalisation of PLN 816 million

At the end of 2019, PFR Ventures signed an agreement with 7 venture capital funds. Consequently, the portfolio of PFR Ventures has been expanded to 30 teams, which have PLN 4 billion to invest in innovative companies.

Among the new teams there are: Avia, FundingBox Deep Tech Fund, Icos Capital Fund, Movens Capital, Oxx, SMOK Ventures, and YouNick. Each of them has a different investment strategy and will finance companies at different stages of development: from an idea on a piece of paper to companies wishing to enter a foreign market.

In 2019 we noted a record amount of capital invested on the Polish VC market. The share of funds launched with the PFR Group was approximately 13%. We hope that in 2020 it will be even higher, though of course not dominant. We already have good signals from the market, in the form of further high rounds with our funds. At this point, another 7 players are entering the market under the PFR club colors

commented Paweł Borys, President of the Polish Development Fund.

New funds from PFR Ventures have raised over PLN 305 million. This is the capital that comes from the Smart Growth Operational Programme 2014-2020. The remaining PLN 511 million comes from the involvement of private investors. Consequently, PFR Ventures has already allocated almost 70% of its funding. Two of the funds (Avia and Icos Capital Fund) are investments made jointly with the National Centre for Research and Development.

We estimate that in 2020 we will launch about 10 more teams. At the same time, we focus on making the investment process in companies as effective as possible. Between April 2019 and January 2020, our funds analysed over 300 projects and invested in about 16% of them. We want to send a clear signal to the market: we have provided the funds with resources, and now they can easily make investments

commented Maciej Ćwikiewicz, President of PFR Ventures.

Three of the new funds have already made their first transactions. SMOK Ventures invested in SmartHotel and ExitPlan, and OXX together with Kernett Partners provided more than USD 22 million in round A raised by Codility. Also active was the CVC Icos fund, which in round A together with EEC Magenta invested over PLN 13 million in Reliability Solutions.

The new funds are also distinguished by the teams that manage them. Most of them are managed by partners with international experience. It is an additional value for our market, which provides us with a transfer of good experiences from other ecosystems and guarantees access to a global network of investors. In the portfolio of active VC funds in which PFR Ventures has invested, one in three has this profile.